My U.S. Pat. No. 4,611,708, granted Sept. 16, 1986, and entitled "Reciprocating Channel Floor Conveyor" discloses and claims a method and apparatus for handling bulk material such as domestic or industrial garbage. The garbage is dumped by garbage trucks onto a reciprocating floor conveyor which delivers it to a receiving container 92. The container is filled in this manner and when full is moved to a land fill or other permanent disposition site. It is also known to provide receiving containers at garbage dump stations (also referred to as "transfer stations") which are in the form of trailers equipped with reciprocating floors. The garbage is dumped into the trailers. When a trailer becomes full, it is connected to a truck which tows it to a permanent disposition site.
It is also known to use a compactor for directly compacting garbage into a trailer. A problem with this practice is that it is necessary to make the trailer compartment which receives the garbage quite strong so that it can withstand the forces applied to it by the compacted garbage. Also, it is necessary to provide such trailer with a movable wall at its front and a telescopic cylinder for moving the wall rearwardly to in that manner push the garbage out from the trailer. Trailers of this type are very expensive and in addition they are very heavy. For example, a forty-five foot trailer may weigh about 26,000 lbs.
The principal object of the present invention is to provide a method for compacting bulk material, such as garbage, into a containment vessel, and then loading the compacted body of the material into a lightweight trailer which is of conventional construction except that it is provided with a reciprocating floor conveyor. By way of typical and therefore nonlimitive example, the reciprocating floor conveyor may be of the type disclosed by my copending application Ser. No. 905,370, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,821,868 issued Apr. 18, 1989, and entitled "Drive/Frame Assembly for a Reciprocating Floor". The disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 4,821,868 is hereby incorporated into this application.